Satanic Saturday Shopping is back at
THOIA, uhh, and despite the rather uninspired splash, this is still probably one of my all time favorite
Superior Pub devil stories ever. It's fast paced, very funny, and has a super clever hook to achieve a high body count-- all the way up to the very last panel, in fact! From the March 1954 issue of
Journey into Fear #18.
Speaking of novelty store items, I wonder if
The Devil's Store carries the
Raquel Welch Pillow, as seen in the ad below? And I wonder what happens when you use it?
I'm definitely not ordering the
7 Foot Monster or
Skin Head Wig from them!
Werewolf Horror Mask? Absolutely.
Where did that x-ray specs bit come from? Did you repurpose it from some Daredevil art? Neat, I like it!
ReplyDeleteThis one is a lot of fun -- there's no real arc -- it's a series of gruesome kills -- sort of like a really condensed night gallery episode. There's the weird morals that the devil seems to be able to kill about anybody -- did the guy smoking the cigar deserve that? Nope. But they are dead never-the-less!
Each little short is fun, but I'm partial to the exploding cigar. That'll hurt!
I love the devil in this. It's a fun little imagine and his inner monologue is so quaint, it makes him more evil! I like that he's grumpy that he didn't get credit for the bus wreck, and then he takes down 3 cops with him -- and who knows what the total body count is with the bus wreck?
This story wasn't taking any prisoners! I'll agree with you, this is one of the better devil tales out there, even outside of Superior Pub.
The Raquel Welch pillow is a great gag item, is it? Well....I suppose, deflated, you could use it as a gag.
ReplyDelete>Where did that x-ray specs bit come from? Did you repurpose it from some Daredevil art?
ReplyDeleteOriginally it was a badly scanned, blurry, crooked image I found on tumblr... so yeah, I repurposed it by coloring it red, adding horns, in general just prettied it up, and of course added the store name and link at the bottom
Perhaps this story was the inspiration for the book and movie titled Needful Things.
ReplyDeleteA more sinister version of this tale would be if Mr. Scratch sold items by mail order, with the return address turning out to be the address of a cemetery. With no way of knowing here the gag gifts came from, Mr. Scratch could make a killing in selling his practical jokes for months or years undetected.
Great terror tale Karswell.
This would be a good idea for a low budget horror comedy movie.
ReplyDeleteIt would be an easy script to make.
I could see sequels!
They wouldn't be that great but I could still see sequels.
The last time I saw a prank novelty store was in the eighties.
It was a small store but there were enough pranksters and tricksters buying their stuff to pay their bills.
Good one.
Excellent. I like the driving idea here--that the devil uses our baser impulses to trick us into sinning. That's a great way to harvest souls and to wreak chaos in a single stroke. And I'm delighted! I've always wanted to see the old saw-the-girl-in-two trick played literally like this. I would love to see a tarted-up Eerie Pubs remake of this one. The punchlines here were already great--the exploding cigar bit especially--but the same story with gouts of blood out the wazoo? Even better.
ReplyDeleteArchie McPhee is a pretty big deal in Seattle.
ReplyDelete